Bones opens this week on a real estate agent giving a tour to a couple. Due to the formula for procedural dramas we know that we will be finding a dead body within the next couple of moments. The title of the episode, in all its alliterated glory, hints it will be some sort of appendage; we are not disappointed on either account.
Elsewhere in Bonesland Booth, Brennan and Sweets are all hangin’. Booth tells them about his grandfather, who is coming to meet them at the diner and is planning on staying at Booth’s apartment for a while. He apparently got kicked out of his nursing home for slugging a nurse.
John Walton (Ralph Waite) of Waltons’ fame plays said Grandfather. When introduced to Brennan he makes references to how Booth must feel towards her and when introduced to Sweets he makes them to Fisher-Price. These continue as B&B leave to answer a case call and Sweets is left to take Hank, the grandfather, to Booth’s apartment. Hank laments loudly that there will not be enough room for his luggage on Sweets’ bicycle.
On their way into the home where the body was found Booth and Bones discuss Hank’s visit. Booth tells Brennan that he is family, “and nothing trumps family, just remember that.” I think that is going to turn out to be one of those not-so-subtle clues the writers are feeding us this episode, so you all remember it too.
Brennan is fascinated, as it seems the body is the only thing to have burned in the room, but she acknowledges the body’s fragile condition and uses the real estate agent’s hair spray as an adhesive to preserve it.
Brennan rules out the fire’s cause being the single candle sticking out of a partially eaten cake sitting oddly on the nightstand next to the body. Booth is thinking spontaneous combustion and although Brennan is adamantly against the theory, she has no alternative answer. GASP.
End of Teaser.
Back in the lab Hodgins explains “The Wick Effect,” which essentially provides scientific grounds for spontaneous combustion. People with a cigarette who pass out from too much alcohol will light on fire and their belly fat will burn inwards containing the fire. Intern of the week, Clark, points out that burn victims will usually struggle, but this one shows no sign of moving.
Conversation flows very easily into plot B of the episode, Booth’s G-daddy moving in. Backstory: apparently he raised Booth after his father left.
Back to the body, it shows signs of Haglund’s deformity, an ugly kankle bump from wearing ill-fitting high heels. So we can now conclude that the pile of ash was a fat chick.
Booth gets a call from a police officer that has his grandfather. Seems ole Pops got lost clearing his head after going to see a friend of his that “up and died” while he was incarcerated at the nursing home. Booth asks to speak to the officer again and then immediately puts him on hold (RUDELY) to speak with the real estate agent, who is wandering about the police station like she belongs there, with a list of the people who had access to the house. Booth is unsatisfied by the list.
In the lab Brennan is looking over a partial 3-D scan of the victim’s hand that Angela is making. Brennan thinks its weird that Booth likes Hank’s nickname for him, Shrimp. It appears she’s never had any other moniker besides Bones, and that only from Seely. Hodgins finds some of the remnants found with the ash are from a wig. Angela thinks the plastic-type material maybe from something else. She scans the color and finds it’s from PriceCo.
Booth is making his way to his apartment with his grandfather in the car when he lets him know that they are going to have to make a short stop. The two Booths start talking about fastballs and baseballs and life. G-daddy Hank lets Booth know that if he ever needs some “alone” time with the bone doctor he will make himself scarce. When Booth says there is nothing going on Hank asks if he is gay — “She’s a keeper!” Booth assures him that he can take care of his own love life.
In PriceCo (which is Wal-Mart for those visual readers out there) Booth tells Gramps to stand under the PriceCo sign in the entrance and not move while he finds the manager. Apparently Tracey has been missing for a week. When the manager goes to get a company picture Booth see Hank, now wearing a PriceCo vest, helping people around the store find what they need. “ Three people said I was a good greeter so I got a vest.”
In the lab Cam, Intern and Brennan are looking over the company file. It seems the girl in question, Meg Tracey, recently lost a significant amount of weight and went down from some 230 pounds to 120. The reason there was so much ash in the bed had to be because someone else was in it too. So now we’re looking at a double murder.
The Intern says the bones found represent about 380 lbs of human so the second vic’s a heifer.
In the diner Booth and Booth and Brennan are eating Lunch. Booth, Jr. gets called away to question the vic’s roommate, leaving Bones and Gramps. He confides in Brennan that he was the reason Booth’s father left. He found him whaling on Seely one day and told him to get out, that he didn’t deserve to be a father. “ If I had been a better man, maybe I could have figured something else out.”
Booth and Brennan plot device of the episode: “ When the time is right,” Hank says, “ you’ll tell him. And if he needs it, you’ll hold him?” Brennan agrees. If that is how they end up getting together … oh, you Bones writers and your cheap, cheap plot devices!
Booth, meanwhile, chats up Meg’s oversized roommate. She says Meg wasn’t seeing anybody special but she used to meet different guys at Club Jiggle, a club for thin people who like people who, well, jiggle. Before she leaves she writes down the names of some people she was at a house party with the night of the murder, as an alibi.
“You can get the second victim’s height from bone fragments?” Cam asks, sounding just as skeptical as I felt, but the intern spouts a long list of scientific-sounding mumbo-jumbo and I feel thoroughly convinced. The male in question is put at 5’5” and, yep, 260 pounds.
Brennan and Booth are in Sweets’ office where he explains the culture of Club Jiggle world as a “feeder and eater” fetish. Seems there is an explanation for the cake by the bed after all. Meg must have turned into a feeder to quiet her own desire to overeat.
At Booth’s apartment Brennan and Booth eat some grilled cheese Hank has made for them. As they prepare to leave to go to the Jiggle club Brennan notices some of Hank’s pills are out. They decide to take him with to get a quick refill on the way.
Cam and Angela study her finished 3-D model of one of the victim’s hands. By putting something into a wound in the palm they discover an object in the shape of a human nose inflicted the injury.
In the car Gramps is impressed by Bones’ intellect, tells her she should go on a game show, that she’d clean up. “ I tell her that all the time, but you know, she’s already loaded.” Hank laments that he didn’t raise Booth very well to be just friends with a beautiful, smart and rich woman. Cue the stock awkward stares David B. and Emily D. keep on hold for just such occasions.
In the club B&B question the bartender and get a name for the fat man: Hugo. Hank dances with the plus-sized women.
Booth and Brennan question the real estate agent, who has brought them an updated list of people who had access to the house and also has the homeowner in tow. She has convinced him that the police can help him sell his house by putting off foreclosure due to it being an active crime scene. B&B notice a Hugo Tucker on the list of names and it turns out he’s a short fat dude!
In the lab the intern has matched the teeth to Hugo Tucker. Brennan gets a call from Hank inviting her for dinner and dominoes after. Booth says Gramps doesn’t have to make them dinner but he insists.
Hodgins finds a slim ring among the remains, a device inserted surgically to limit the amount of food someone can consume at one time. Turns out that is how Meg lost all the weight so quickly, but the ring wasn’t registered to her medical insurance, it was given out to her roommate!
Booth gets a call, Hank’s started a fire back at the ranch.
Booth brings Hank to hang with Sweets at the office while he interrogates the roommate. The two start playing dominoes as Booth walks Brennan out. He admits that Gramps might need more than he can give and that maybe he should take a leave of absence. Brennan asks if he can afford it, but that whole “nothing trumps family” spiel comes ‘round again.
Booth interrogates the roommate; she didn’t know about the gastric bypass surgery. Booth says that they talked to the people at the party but no one could commit to her being there the entire night.
Intern has found bones that were damaged before the fire. Along the edge there is a resin leading Hodgins to determine that the murder weapon was made from wood. When looking at the wooden bed Angela realizes the finials, the decorative knobs that go on top of the posts, are missing.
From one shot to the next the entire gang, intern and all, jump from the room with the bed to Angela’s room with the computer thingy that shows graphics. She pulls up the virtual tour of the house from the real estate page. The finials were wooden heads of the home owner and his wife. It wasn’t about who was having sex, but where. The homeowner had made the bed for him and his wife. He went back to sleep in the bed and found the two Jigglers having their jiggle sex and killed them.
Booth gets takeout for him and G-daddy Hank, who says, “I don’t think so” for the millionth time. Hank tells Booth that he loves him but he is moving back to the retirement home because people there need him. You get the feeling that the dominoes game with Sweets sent him there.
Brennan and Booth give him a ride back to the center. Hank gives Brennan a goodbye and tells her to remember that although “he’s big and strong” he’s “going to need someone. Everyone needs someone. Don’t be scared.” He hints at her feelings for Booth, then tells her that “it’s all in there, everything you need to know.” Motioning to his heart of course. I am giving you these quotes because yes, it was that painful and awkward and unnecessary, plot-wise. GEEZ, just get them together and stop hurting me with poorly written subplots and dialogue! “You just do what it tells you,” says Hank. Yes, Booth, just tell Brennan you love her. BUT instead they tell each other he said nothing, and leave. Booth does tell Bones he likes “that thing around (her) neck.”
A Compliment. So there’s a start, I guess.
